PSHE

Citizenship is the chance to make a difference to the place where you belong.

Charles Handy

Intent

At Christ Church CE Primary, we strongly believe PSHE enables our pupils to develop skills and understanding which will equip them to make positive choices, widen horizons and create aspirations for life, as local, national and global citizens. We will teach the children how to develop a sense of self-worth, their rights and responsibilities and exactly what it takes to be a positive role model in school and in the wider community.

Our PSHE curriculum seeks to create a firm foundation for individual growth and ultimately aims to provide provision which allows pupils to now and in the future, make “real life” choices leading to personal happiness, social cohesiveness, good health, economic responsibility and mental wellbeing.

Our PSHE curriculum promotes the needs and interests of all pupils, irrespective of gender, culture, ability, personal circumstance or any special educational need.

Ensuring the children have well developed and rounded vocabularies is a key aspect of our school vision and our PSHE curriculum enables all of our learners to hold detailed discussions around topics and know the correct terminology.

Implementation

At Christ Church, we believe that PSHE plays a vital part of children’s education and is the cornerstone of their development into well-rounded local, national and global citizens. To ensure high standards of teaching and learning in PSHE, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school. PSHE is delivered every week through quality first teaching as a discrete subject while also being taught through additional learning opportunities such as theme days and weeks, cross-curricular links, assemblies and visitors. There are also occasions where staff may feel it necessary to teach PSHE as a result of an issue which has arisen in their own class.

The delivered curriculum (scheme of work) reflects the needs of our pupils and is tailored to meet these needs. We expect teachers to use the PSHE programme to equip pupils with a sound understanding of risk and with knowledge and skills necessary to make safe and informed decisions.

PSHE is integral to the development of children’s values in order for them to become a positive citizens in forever changing community.

Our curriculum is split into eight themes;

Healthy and happy friendships,
Similarities and differences,
Families and committed relationships,
Healthy minds and healthy bodies,
Caring and responsibilities,
Coping with change,
Democracy,
Finance

Within these eight themes; British values, SRE and diversity are carefully threaded throughout the curriculum.

As well as these core themes we also feel it is incredibly important to have safeguarding themes threaded throughout the year, like; Aspirations, Water Safety, Road Safety, Anti-bullying, PANTS, Mental Health, Hygiene (including dental hygiene) and First Aid skills.

At Christ Church, we champion children’s mental health and have made mental health opportunities a priority in our PSHE curriculum and in wider school life, particularly to help combat the effects of the recent pandemic.

We believe that all children are capable of achieving high standards in PSHE. Teachers throughout school reinforce this and ensure that they create a positive attitude to PSHE learning within their classrooms. Our whole school approach to the teaching and learning of PSHE involves the following:

PSHE will be taught in planned and arranged units by the class teacher following our bespoke scheme of work, drawing from resources from Discovery Education, Goodness and Mercy, Go Givers and specialised Drug Education programmes.
Planning and lessons include opportunities for children to discuss their personal opinions and experiences without judgement and opportunities where children are encouraged to ask their own questions and apply their skills and think critically to discover the answers.
PSHE lessons are engaging and challenging to develop children’s understanding of key topics and to help them to develop into well-rounded individuals.
From Early Years through KS2, PSHE is progressive and builds on the learning and skill development of the previous years.

Impact

In EYFS, KS1 and KS2 children use class floor books to record their responses to and progress in PSHE sessions. We feel PSHE is a subject that children need to work together and discuss and reflect issues. The use of floor books ensures that key aspects of discussions are recorded to ensure that the children’s learning in each area can be assessed and enables progression to be shown throughout the year. These can then be passed to the next teacher so that transition within the PSHE curriculum is smooth and ensures that children’s prior knowledge is accessed when revisiting topics.

PSHE is an important part of school assemblies and collective worship were children’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural curiosity is stimulated, challenged and nurtured.